This increased demand for the contaminated marijuana by causing it to be mistaken for higher-quality Acapulco Gold. ĭuring the late 1970s, as much as 20 percent of the Mexican marijuana being imported into the US was contaminated with the herbicide paraquat, which caused the plants to turn golden. When the US Patent and Trademark Office briefly opened trade name registration for medical marijuana strains in 2010, Acapulco Gold was one of the trademarks submitted before the category was abandoned. The rolling papers reportedly generated most of the funding to support the 1972 California marijuana initiative Proposition 19. In 1971, the term was used as a brand name for rolling papers intended to be sold to raise funds to campaign for marijuana legalization Amorphia, the organization that backed the effort, eventually merged with NORML. ![]() It was incorrectly claimed as early as 1968 that the name 'Acapulco Gold' had been trademarked in anticipation of marijuana legalization in August 1969, Harlan Ellison asserted that the trademark had been registered to tobacco company Liggett & Myers. A For comparison, the legal price in Port Angeles, Washington was $12 per gram in November 2016. Acapulco Gold was possibly $36 per kilo at the source in Mexico in 1973. Reported prices for Acapulco Gold were "the astronomical sum of twenty dollars an ounce" during the 1960s, $500 per kilo in 1967, and $30 an ounce in 1972, or adjusted for inflation, equal to around $150 an ounce in 2022 USD. Acapulco Gold was particularly in demand at Columbia University in the early 1970s, so much so that the university had a dedicated smuggling route via Austin, Texas. ![]() The rock duo Heth and Jed dealt Acapulco Gold as teenagers, and the drug dealer and Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin claimed to have given some to future US Vice President Dan Quayle as a wedding present. Longtime NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle experimented with it around 1970, seeking to understand if marijuana would cause problems for his players. Īcapulco Gold was a favorite strain of Carol Wayne, Paul Ferrara, and Jack Nicholson. The strain's association with quality was such that the 1993 textbook Drugs, Alcohol and Mental Health claimed that "Acapulco gold" had become a generic term for high-grade marijuana. ![]() Its potency was due to a THC content of 23%, making it one of the strongest strains available at the time. Ĭalled "connoisseur pot", in the 1960s Acapulco Gold was "a sought-after marijuana for American smokers, considered better quality than the weed growing in California or Texas." "Those in the know sought Mexican Acapulco Gold for the highest of highs." Another report highlighted its "exquisite taste". When cultivated outside its native range, it is considered to be substantially less potent than native plants: "while the original genetics of Acapulco Gold can be found among global seed companies, without that blazing Acapulco sun and Gulf breezes, the end product remains an artifice, a simulacrum of what could be had in 1974." As early as 1975, New York Magazine claimed that the strain's original potency had already been diluted due to overplanting in response to demand. ![]() Smuggler and promoter Gary Tovar said that Acapulco Gold's distinctive color was the outcome of the way the plants were aged and dried by the wind off the Pacific Ocean. First recorded in the United States in 1964, Acapulco Gold was defined by the Oxford English Dictionary the following year as "a special grade of cannabis growing in the vicinity of Acapulco.with a color of brownish gold, or a mixture of gold and green." Traditionally cultivated in the Guerrero Mountains outside the city, it is a landrace strain described as having "mind-blowing effects", which were attributed to a long growing season and the plant growing in conditions to which it was adapted.
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